Solutions to the illegal parking issue in Hong Kong

Hong Kong drivers don’t fear the tow-away zone. How can we improve the volume of illegal parking in Hong Kong?

Anyone who’s ever lived and driven overseas knows Hong Kong drivers do not fear the one thing out-of-towners do: the tow-away zone. Ticketing is a major disincentive to illegal parking in many cities around the world (if you can take a car into the downtown area to begin with, which is another story); the threat of having your car towed away and impounded — at the owner’s cost — is very real, and keeps many drivers from pushing their luck for “just 15 minutes…”

That’s not the case in Hong Kong, where double parking has become the scourge of bus drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. Hong Kong’s infrastructure has a great deal to do with its double-parking plague, as even the widest streets can be too small for the sheer volume of traffic the SAR’s roads carry every day.

More carparks could ease the burden, but underground or otherwise, they can seem like wasted space in a city constantly staring down the barrel of residential and office supply shortages.

Then there’s the real estate itself. Of Hong Kong’s 40,000 plus buildings, many of which are from the early post-war period, few commercial or residential properties have cargo doors and dedicated delivery entrances that get lorries off the roads. On the residential front, moving season — September and May — are particularly clogged, as moving vans have few options but to pull up to the kerb in front of an apartment block and move as quickly as possible.

Parking comes not only at a cost premium but at a space premium as well, with pay-as-you-go lots and underground parking in apartment and office towers the exception rather than the rule.

The only way, may be, to get illegal double parking reduced is to reduce the number of cars on the streets. Almost comprehensive and reasonably priced public transit would seem to make the need for cars moot, but the appeal of a shiny new high-tech, environmentally conscious car is too much for many of us to resist. Which is where incentivising car purchases need rethinking. Offering tax cuts and other benefits to bus companies that switch to cleaner vehicles is not the same as offering tempting discounts to individual drivers, whose cars usually carry one passenger. And who then double park to pick up, maybe, one more.

Another way to cut down illegal double parking, and arguably, most likely to have significant impact, is to make the infraction truly painful. Currently, offenders are fined $1,500 for spitting or littering, as much as $2,000 for jaywalking, but only $320 for illegal parking. Should recent government proposals be adopted, parking fines would be increased to just under $500, hardly an amount that would make most drivers sweat. But there’s still hope: some advocates are making serious noise about $2,000 parking fines. The spot fines brought spitting to a nearly screeching halt during SARS; there’s no reason the same thing wouldn’t happen with stiffer parking fines.

With an increase in fines, one critical element to successfully decrease the amount of illegal parking is the serious commitment by police and the Government to enforce fines. In turn, the illegal parking problem can gradually improve, allowing traffic to flow smoothly on the already narrow streets around the city.

One shortcoming though - while increasing fine can somehow deter illegal parking, it may benefit the owners of those parking spaces as parking fare will be lifted as well.